OrionWorks wrote:
Let me repeat that:
"...NEED TO FIND REASONS to obstruct and delay Obama's agenda..."
What an incredibly revealing sentence.
Does he know what he said?
It is hilarious. BUT that was the teaser headline. It could be that a
Washington Post copy editor composed it, and reworded it to sound
even more appalling than the column. In some newspapers, writers get
to okay a headline or teaser summary. In others they do not.
The text below that was copied from the column and I am sure Kristol
has the final say on that:
"[Republicans] will oppose it. Can they do so effectively? . . .
Perhaps -- if they can find reasons to obstruct and delay. . . ."
I would say that is close to the summary. It means they "need to find
reasons."
Perhaps this is a misunderstanding? Perhaps he meant that Republicans
need to come up with parliamentary maneuvers; i.e. reasons to slow
down the procedures. Perhaps it does not mean they need to find
ideological reasons to oppose the policies. They already have them,
although in my opinion their reasons are threadbare.
As I said, some of their reasons are weird and easy to demolish, such
as Gov. Jindal's opposition to monitoring dangerous natural
phenomenon that his state is not subject to. It is "pork" if you have
no volcanoes nearby, and vital to survival if you do!
If they do not spend this money and a volcano knocks an airplane out
of sky -- as almost happened several times -- people will be up in
arms because the government did not spend the cost of one large
highway bridge to prevent the tragedy. The dollar amounts, casualties
and other effects are similar to losing a large bridge in a
metropolitan area. A modern industrial nation that fails to monitor
such things would be insane. If a Japanese government official were
to propose scrapping volcano monitoring, he would be thrown out of
office in a few hours.
(Let us be fair to Jindal and agree that a lot of programs probably
are pork, and most people would agree they are. I do not know the
percentage or dollar amount of such programs. He -- or his
speechwriter -- just happened to pick one that isn't, in a
spectacularly inept move.)
(Speaking of Japanese officials getting fired, the MP and cabinet
minister who showed up drunk at the press conference the other day
also wandered around the Vatican Museum, blundered into exhibits and
set off alarms. Details have not been published but I envision him
pushing over the velvet rope to go up to a nude statue and stroke it
on the butt. The Japanese Embassy in Rome must have been relieved
when he stepped on the plane to leave the country. That MP happens to
be from Hokkaido, Mizuno's district I think, and Mizuno made some
unkind remarks about him. I feel that if we cannot have a competent
politicians let us at least have amusing ones.)
- Jed
